Sim Bully on your child’s computer

Researchers develop a software tool to help victims of bullying develop …

Bullying is a tough issue. Studies have revealed that victims of chronic bullying end up being consistently less healthy over the long term. However, people's response to victims of bullying range from dismissive (harden up already) to acting as bullies themselves (show me who teased you, Timmy, and I'll give them what-for). It gets even more complex when one considers that children are devious, and bullying doesn't always result in physical scars.

Now, as a result of my history as a victim of bullying and now having a daughter who is exiting her third year as the victim of bullying, I am not a dispassionate observer in this. I want solutions. Specifically, I either want the bullying to stop—not realistic—or I want ways to help my daughter cope with and escape from bullies.

So, it was timely that the EU's science funding agency chose to highlight the Victec program, led by Ruth Aylett at Hariet-Watt University. The aim of the Victec program is to develop game-like environments that allow victims of bullying to try to develop strategies for escaping from it by experimenting with different responses. After a bit of searching, I managed to locate a recent publication from the collaboration, and the results are what I would classify as tentatively useful.

Building a virtual playground

First, let's start with the technology, called FearNot! (Fun with Empathic Agents to Reach Novel Outcomes in Teaching—science and acronyms, UR TRYING TOO HARD). The researchers created a virtual school environment and populated it with children who fell into three classes: bully, bystander, and victim. The environment and models were made realistic enough to engage the children and allow them to identify with the characters.

The characters themselves were endowed with artificial intelligence that allowed them to modify their behavior in response to the success or failure of previous stratagems. This also added a random element to the environment, so the children using the software encountered a variety of situations and didn't end up simply replaying the same set of scenarios.

To make it as realistic as possible, the researchers used literature studies of bully-victim interactions to build up a basic repertoire of behavior for all classes of characters. The characters could then choose which behaviors to initiate and when. In addition, the characters showed their emotions, so the users could, in some sense, see inside their minds.

The FearNot! software could be used in two ways: passive observation, or playing the role of an invisible friend by suggesting different strategies to victims. The basic idea is two-fold. First, victims get to look down on the situation to see how it plays out in a broader context, getting a better understanding of where events are heading. Hopefully, they can then apply this knowledge. The second is that they can suggest that the characters test different responses to being victimized, seeing which are successful and lead to the bully giving up without having to actually risk experimenting in real life.

Real world testing

It sounds kind of cool, but how did it go? The researchers put it to test in a set of state primary schools in the UK and Germany. The kids enrolled in the study were aged between seven and ten, and selected either for a control group or a group that was allowed to use the FearNot! software. The schools were visited by the researchers, who provided an in-class lesson on bullying so that everyone had a common understanding of what counts as bullying. The children were then asked to self-report on bullying before, and at intervals during, their time using the FearNot! software.

The results were a qualified success. The researchers found that the first tests after using FearNot! showed a statistically significant group of children had escaped from their bullies. However, later tests showed no further improvement. On closer inspection, the researchers found that there was a significant difference between the responses of German and UK children. When analyzed separately, they found that the follow-up tests showed that more UK children continued to escape their bullies, but this was not the case for German children.

The overall success was not especially good, coming in at around one in five kids escaping victimization compared to the control group. But there are some caveats—that one in five is from groups of children that were already classified as being (or at risk of being) bullied. Furthermore, the results were taken over a very short reporting period, so there is no data on sustained success.

Adding to the caveats are other, smaller problems: the researchers could not use a completely randomized selection between the control and non-control groups because not all schools had access to computers adequate to run the software. Every school reported problems with the software at some point (e.g., crashes), so the children had less time with the software than planned.

Another interesting finding was that UK school children and teachers have far more experience using computers, experienced fewer problems, and had higher expectations for success than their German counterparts. Surprisingly enough, the final results of the study bear this out, with UK children having better experiences, and UK teachers rating the software's usefulness higher.

On a more basic level, the approach seems to assume that bullies are irredeemably evil and that it is more effective to teach the victim to avoid being victimized than it is to try and inject empathy into the life of a bully. I have some sympathy with the practicalities of this approach because, frankly, current victims are more important than future potential victims. But, at the same time, it has the potential to turn into a game of "blame the victim," which worries me a lot.

In general though, I suspect that most child bullies stop being bullies at some point, while those who don't go on to be crappy managers. So maybe this is the right direction.

Finally, there will be those who shout "Improve the teachers! Where are the parents?" and other such generalities. The key thing to remember is that bullies don't perform on demand. It is a lucky parent that catches a bully in the act, allowing them to take direct action. Teachers have more power, particularly over the more subtle forms of bullying, but even then, the teacher is not everywhere. So, yeah, parents and teachers can usually only take action after the fact, or try to prepare children. FearNot! seems to provide a bit of extra support for teachers and parents in preparing children, and I suspect that, used consistently, it might even be helpful.

I read an article in Psycology Today that stated that bullies are essentially flawed individuals. Bullying is basically the main method of interaction they have, and they really don't get better. The vicitims are chosen because they are good targets, and that's why you see people who are consistently bullied. The best thing they could do is get more friends, be less passive, and try to defuse situations with humor.

Now that's all from on magazine article, so take it with a grain of salt.

The adjective meaning "from the UK" is "British". I know, I know, Britain is not strictly speaking the same as the UK (Great Britain is the island where England, Wales and Scotland are located, and does not include Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK) but "UK" is not an adjective, and British is almost universally understood to mean "from the UK" despite the inconsistency regarding Northern Ireland. We don't refer to "USA children", please extend the same courtesy.

I read an article in Psycology Today that stated that bullies are essentially flawed individuals. Bullying is basically the main method of interaction they have, and they really don't get better. The vicitims are chosen because they are good targets, and that's why you see people who are consistently bullied. The best thing they could do is get more friends, be less passive, and try to defuse situations with humor.

Now that's all from on magazine article, so take it with a grain of salt.

Looks like there is a bit of moralizing going on there: "bullies are essentially flawed individuals". It may be the case that they are physically unable to interact in another way but that seems highly unlikely. More likely is that the bully has certain natural advantages (size or intelligence) that naturally lend themselves to a strategy that allows the bully to get what he wants, let's call it "emotional satisfaction". In most cases behaviour is the result of a successful strategy and the trick is figuring out which game is being played when you can't rely on the players to explain it.

My own personal solution to bullying from when I was younger - a good strong punch to the left cheekbone. Failing that, knife hand to the collarbone or the neck. It's kinda difficult to bully the kid that does martial arts

I just remember bloodying someones nose when I was 12. They left me alone after that and the message was out I wouldn't take it.

I don't remember if I read that in a Psychology Today magazine or not back then.

Right. There's a lot of moralizing that goes along with bullying (i.e. a lot of parents reliving their own trauma) but there are multiple ways of combating bullying. Humor is one. It deflates the emotional satisfaction the bully is looking for although that humiliation can provoke even more rage in certain types. Violence is another. It makes the bullying too expensive. However that may result in an arms race/blood feud/etc. The point is that frustrating the bully's strategy is what's important and there are many ways to do it. Are some ways better than others? Perhaps but I'd like to see what standard is being used to assess "better". It's about strategy and counter-strategy. Each has its drawbacks but all of this moralizing kind of makes me sick.

Of my many peers that have gone through difference teacher's colleges in my province, it seems as though solutions and recourse to bullying is virtually non-existent. You would think that teachers would be well-versed in dealing with bullies, but unfortunately this isn't the case, and instead we have teams of researchers figuring out alternative means to tell the bully to stop and to tell the victim that it's not his or her fault.

So, concerning the last paragraph ("Improve the teachers! Where are the parents?"), FearNot! should and can only be used as support- if the parents and teachers don't already have an idea on what to do, I doubt FearNot! will be as effective as it could be.

As someone who was often a real jerk in school, I question the validity of this test. You can't build a model for bullying based on literature or case studies. Picking on kids typically involves persistent, long-term behavior to harass the victim. Paying attention to subtle clues to gauge their response. It's no different than any other complex social interaction. Think about how clunky and unrealistic most videogame representations of flirting are compared to real life.

If nothing else, they should have at least brought in a few bullies to play-test the game to gauge the realism.

As a former victim and a parent, I am part of the suck it up crowd. The bullying stopped when the cost of it became to high. I used the both passive and non-passive methods to raise the cost of being a jerk to me. On the passive end, I would steal the bully's home work and throw it out. on the non passive end I would respond by attacking their younger siblings / pets outside of school hours. I often had the chance to share the detention hall with my foes. I simply made the costs too high.

I was bullied as a kid, but since I was taught to turn the other cheek, let teachers "handle" (ignore) it, etc., I never got a handle on it to stop it. I wish I'd been told it was okay to defend myself. A video game wouldn't have done crap for me; telling me I could physically fight back (and even better, showing me how) would have made a ton of difference. I think even if I'd gotten suspended over defending myself, knowing I was in the right would have felt a lot better than thinking there must be something wrong with me, and the bullies were right, because everyone let it continue. That has had some very bad effects over time.

I read an article in Psycology Today that stated that bullies are essentially flawed individuals. Bullying is basically the main method of interaction they have, and they really don't get better. The vicitims are chosen because they are good targets, and that's why you see people who are consistently bullied. The best thing they could do is get more friends, be less passive, and try to defuse situations with humor.

Now that's all from on magazine article, so take it with a grain of salt.

Looks like there is a bit of moralizing going on there: "bullies are essentially flawed individuals". It may be the case that they are physically unable to interact in another way but that seems highly unlikely. More likely is that the bully has certain natural advantages (size or intelligence) that naturally lend themselves to a strategy that allows the bully to get what he wants, let's call it "emotional satisfaction". In most cases behaviour is the result of a successful strategy and the trick is figuring out which game is being played when you can't rely on the players to explain it.

No moralizing at all. The article's main thesis is that bullies themselves are the ones that are worse off. Bullying is basically the only way they know how to interact with the world, and this leads to all sorts of bad things down the road.

As Edzo and pyro409 point out, bullies seek out a certain type or person who makes a good target, and as a parent or a victim you can't really do anything to treat the bully, so your best bet is to make yourself a non-ideal target.

artifex wrote:

I was bullied as a kid, but since I was taught to turn the other cheek, let teachers "handle" (ignore) it, etc., I never got a handle on it to stop it. I wish I'd been told it was okay to defend myself. A video game wouldn't have done crap for me; telling me I could physically fight back (and even better, showing me how) would have made a ton of difference. I think even if I'd gotten suspended over defending myself, knowing I was in the right would have felt a lot better than thinking there must be something wrong with me, and the bullies were right, because everyone let it continue. That has had some very bad effects over time.

This is what the article mentions actually. That the targets of bullying think something is wrong with them, and withdraw even more, making them more isolated and even more promising targets.

I agree with some of the responses here about fighting back. Back in the 70's and 80's, I usually stood my ground and usually gained respect by doing so. However, kids nowadays, I wouldn't recommend it. Kids nowadays are vastly more violent compared to when I was growing up. The worst I had to deal with back in the day was maybe, maybe, a pocket knife being pulled on you. Now, you could get a gun pulled on you or get beat to almost an inch of your life by the bullies other buddies who joined in on the beating. This could maybe be attributed to violent gangs recruiting in our public schools. In my area, gangs are a big problem that was ignored for the longest.

You can try the humor route but if you go to far and humiliate the bully, you are looking at even more trouble than you had before. Now the bully has to "save face" in front of his peers and has to do something more than just bullying.

If nothing else, they should have at least brought in a few bullies to play-test the game to gauge the realism.

This was the same thing I thought when reading the article. What do the bullies see in the game? Do they see themselves? Bullies are probably much harder to find. In a private setting, I think most students who are victims will admit it but I'm not sure most bullies will admit to bullying. It would be much nicer to fix the bullies than to have to deal with victims in the first place.

As the article states, bullies tend to switch off the behavior when adults are around, therefore I think it is very important for all activities at school to be adult-supervised. Even the five-ten minute passing periods in between classes, the teachers should stand in the hall outside their class and watch what is going on, and be there in the stairwells, etc. If a group of kids are at the edge of the yard at recess, an adult should walk over and be in ear-shot.

Parents should be on top of the situation. By "on top" I mean that if a son/daughter complains of being bullied the parents should treat it as immediately as if it were a hurt arm that needs to be x-rayed. Go directly to the school, the teacher, the principal, gym teacher, etc. make sure that the alleged bullying is over-exposed on the first instance. Demand the school contact the parents of the alleged bully and follow up with the school on what came out of that contact. I think the parents reaction needs to be swift and severe to make it very obvious to the kids that addressing bullying is a very, very different situation than a "tattle-tale". Most teachers, and parents, already know to tell kids to not tattle and work out problems themselves, but when the issue is bullying, it is far more serious and needs to be addressed and solved immediately.

If a handful of concerned parents make a lot of noise about one alleged bully, then the school is going to choose to deal with the bully just so they don't have to deal with listening to screaming parents. What the school does with the bully (no more alleged necessarily) at that point is difficult, but it could be simply a special education environment for kids with behavioral problems.

I read an article in Psycology Today that stated that bullies are essentially flawed individuals. Bullying is basically the main method of interaction they have, and they really don't get better. The vicitims are chosen because they are good targets, and that's why you see people who are consistently bullied. The best thing they could do is get more friends, be less passive, and try to defuse situations with humor.

Now that's all from on magazine article, so take it with a grain of salt.

Looks like there is a bit of moralizing going on there: "bullies are essentially flawed individuals". It may be the case that they are physically unable to interact in another way but that seems highly unlikely. More likely is that the bully has certain natural advantages (size or intelligence) that naturally lend themselves to a strategy that allows the bully to get what he wants, let's call it "emotional satisfaction". In most cases behaviour is the result of a successful strategy and the trick is figuring out which game is being played when you can't rely on the players to explain it.

No moralizing at all. The article's main thesis is that bullies themselves are the ones that are worse off. Bullying is basically the only way they know how to interact with the world, and this leads to all sorts of bad things down the road.

I'm not sure what you mean by "bullies themselves are worse off". There are at least two ways to moralize here (one is more insidious than the other): 1) all bullies are evil; 2) there is something wrong with bullies. #1 is just stupid. #2 is seductive but wrong. Bullies are doing the same thing that everyone does: using a strategy that maximizes their emotional satisfaction at minimal cost. The way in which they do it may harm them and the person being bullied but there is nothing fundamentally (or "essentially") wrong with (most) bullies (except true psychopaths which are extremely rare).

In my experience, it was much more complicated emotionally. For one, the bully was someone who really was so much stronger than everyone else, that it was well known that fighting back would get you badly beaten up. In fact, I witnessed him beat people down in the halls on 2 occasions. It wasn't just a little spat, it was bloody, and he wasn't afraid of getting hit.

This was the case with 2 or 3 people in the school. Looking back at what I saw happen to me and others, I can see that it really is complicated. For one, the people being bullied really were fairly weird. That includes me. We had poor social skills and couldn't relate to people well. I wasn't always the nicest person in the world. I wouldn't bully people, but I was not courteous or very likable. It's like being a gazelle on the plain of hungry lions. By and large, most people didn't like the people who were being bullied, but they didn't like them before they were bullied either. What I began to notice, though, was that while the bullies had the respect of a lot of people, and many of them were in the "cool" crowd, on one actually liked them either. There were plenty of cool people who people actually liked, and they tended to be the nicer people.

What's interesting about that, to me, is that as time went by, people valued general niceness more than just status. The bullies slowly lost any respect they had, but didn't change. I was changing too, as I realized more and more how much general civility was important, I became more civil and tried to be sociable.

As I got heavily involved in band in highschool, something I was very good at, my social skills grew and I made many more friends. I also became a lot nicer and cared more about what other people thought.

Finally, the great point of realization was near the end of my senior year, I encountered my bully after having not interacted with him for at least a year or two. He made some snide comment about gym in middle school, not trying to be nice or anything - I think he was looking to start something up, and referred to it as the good-ole-days. I just agreed with him, as if it were all a big joke that I didn't care about any more, and that seemed to make him not care. It was as if seeing that I didn't care one way or another about it was enough to make him lose interest completely.

It's foolish to blame any one thing, the bully, victim, teacher, parent, or society for these problems. To assume that any one of these could cause this to happen is giving way to much credit to any one problem. The truth, as I feel it, is that bullies are people who get off on this and find easy people to manipulate, who themselves rarely do anything productive to stop it. This is both because they don't know how and probably couldn't even if they tried. I know if I was a much nicer person in Middle School I would not have had nearly as many problems. But, I wasn't a nice person and I wasn't social. I had no idea how to relate to "normal" people. The most important thing I've learned since then is that none of us is normal, and we all have our dark corners of messed up crap; at least everyone I've ever gotten to know has.

As a former victim and a parent, I am part of the suck it up crowd. The bullying stopped when the cost of it became to high. I used the both passive and non-passive methods to raise the cost of being a jerk to me. On the passive end, I would steal the bully's home work and throw it out. on the non passive end I would respond by attacking their younger siblings / pets outside of school hours. I often had the chance to share the detention hall with my foes. I simply made the costs too high.

Since pyro409 happens to be my brother, I also know that he saw a kid who kept antagonizing him and wasn't looking. He ran as fast as he could, full sprint, and smashed him into the lockers face first. Bloody nose=good. Screwing with Pyro409=bad. Tactics like that work.

Another story: one of my friends was being repeatedly beaten up by a jerk in high school. Another friend of mine, a total psycho who could have been an Olympic athlete if he didn’t like cocaine so much, grabbed him by the shirt, held him against the wall, and said “If you beat up Michael again, I’m going to cut your f***ing head off.” If was made more convincing when he held up the knife he planned to use for the beheading. Problem solved.

I took a lot of bullying as a kid. If I had it to do over again, I just would have sent somebody to the emergency room, and that would have ended it all. I just don't see how this is a software simulation problem.

I do simulation and optimization software for a living. I have a program that can find the optimal solution for the Bubble Breaker came that comes free on cell phones. Can it stop a bully? I doubt it.

I'm not sure what you mean by "bullies themselves are worse off". There are at least two ways to moralize here (one is more insidious than the other): 1) all bullies are evil; 2) there is something wrong with bullies. #1 is just stupid. #2 is seductive but wrong. Bullies are doing the same thing that everyone does: using a strategy that maximizes their emotional satisfaction at minimal cost. The way in which they do it may harm them and the person being bullied but there is nothing fundamentally (or "essentially") wrong with (most) bullies (except true psychopaths which are extremely rare).

I think you are reading a bit too much into the phrase "flawed individual." We are all, one way or another, flawed individuals. Show me a person that doesn't have problems and I'll show you a liar.

Bullies take their problems and turn them into abusive, socially unacceptable behavior. How can you see that as anything other than a flaw? That doesn't mean they don't have good qualities or are some sort of sociopath. But I think most people can agree that personal issues which lead to abusive behavior towards other individuals are indeed flaws and the behavior that flaw causes is simply not acceptable in civilized society. If you don't like the word "wrong" or "flaw", fine...find some other word to describe it. "Unacceptable" seems to fit to me. But in the end, I think it is a lot of hand wringing over terminology when we can all agree that these are behaviors and issues that we'd like to correct and prevent from happening.

Being a child is a complicated assignment. The world the adults have built is filled with non-obvious challenges and non-obvious solutions. You at least don’t have to tackle it alone; you are part of a “cohort” of similar persons also working through the same issues. Bullying undermines your world by revealing, yes, that some of your cohort are working against you… but more distressingly it also reveals that many others of your cohort are not going to help. You learn that you are surrounded by children (and, yes, adults too) who will break the rules of “proper behavior” in order to avoid becoming involved. Your “enemies list” includes not only those who pull your books from you and throw them down the hallway- but all of those around you who pretend that nothing is happening. Bullying is not frightening because “Joey hates you!” – it is frightening because, to the victim, everyone appears to be on Joey’s side.

My solution to bullying was to make friends with some of older, bigger kids or befriending classmates who did have older brothers, since I didn't have older siblings. That was usually enough to keep bullies off my back.

When I was in middle school, I was the target of bullying. Ended up paying two older kids to look out for me - they stepped in once and the problem was solved permanently. Didn't even have to pay them for long... I think it cost me a total of $20. What can I say... born economist?

Bullying is also, most likely, our first brush with “Evil”. Life is filled with injury, disease, bad luck, mistakes, and those who want to take from us. 'Bad things' of course but we tend to define capital-e-Evil as harmful actions that don’t yield gain. If you intimidate people to steal their lunch money you’re not “Evil”, you’re a mugger. But if you just like to dump out kids’ lunch bags and stomp on them… well, that’s “Evil”. Needless to say, “what about this Evil business, anyway?” is a puzzle of long standing. No wonder so many treat with this first childhood encounter by advising “suffer through it and hope it goes away”.

Best way to prevent bullying? Put a fist in the face of the person doing the bullying. I'm a pacifist, but even I know that with bullies, the best way to get them to leave you alone is to prove to them that you aren't going to take it, and do the old beat-down on them.

I'm not sure what you mean by "bullies themselves are worse off". There are at least two ways to moralize here (one is more insidious than the other): 1) all bullies are evil; 2) there is something wrong with bullies. #1 is just stupid. #2 is seductive but wrong. Bullies are doing the same thing that everyone does: using a strategy that maximizes their emotional satisfaction at minimal cost. The way in which they do it may harm them and the person being bullied but there is nothing fundamentally (or "essentially") wrong with (most) bullies (except true psychopaths which are extremely rare).

I think you are reading a bit too much into the phrase "flawed individual." We are all, one way or another, flawed individuals. Show me a person that doesn't have problems and I'll show you a liar.

Bullies take their problems and turn them into abusive, socially unacceptable behavior. How can you see that as anything other than a flaw? That doesn't mean they don't have good qualities or are some sort of sociopath. But I think most people can agree that personal issues which lead to abusive behavior towards other individuals are indeed flaws and the behavior that flaw causes is simply not acceptable in civilized society. If you don't like the word "wrong" or "flaw", fine...find some other word to describe it. "Unacceptable" seems to fit to me. But in the end, I think it is a lot of hand wringing over terminology when we can all agree that these are behaviors and issues that we'd like to correct and prevent from happening.

Perhaps I am reading too much into "flaw". I was interpreting "flaw" as something that can't be changed. My point simply is that bullies are doing what everyone does but we don't happen to like the outcome (and I'm not suggesting that we should). Since the structure is a common one we should be able to manipulate it. The only way to stop bullying is to find effective strategies that get bullies to stop bullying. Putting them in special ed is one of the least attractive options at least according to a certain understanding of special ed.

Perhaps I am reading too much into "flaw". I was interpreting "flaw" as something that can't be changed. My point simply is that bullies are doing what everyone does but we don't happen to like the outcome (and I'm not suggesting that we should). Since the structure is a common one we should be able to manipulate it. The only way to stop bullying is to find effective strategies that get bullies to stop bullying. Putting them in special ed is one of the least attractive options at least according to a certain understanding of special ed.

Yeah, special ed would seem like a pretty bad solution to the problem. Mandated counseling/therapy maybe? I can hear the howls from the parents of bullies already...

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu/Wrestling/Judo. Enough said.Ignore it if it is just some stupid crap (name calling, low level teasing), beat their ass if it is physical/can cause immediate harm. As someone who was picked on and beat up for most of his elementary school years, it was not until I hit a kid in the head with a brick who bullied me that he stopped and action was taken. The guy was on top of me hitting me, so I grabbed the nearest object and hit him as hard as I could with it. He stopped. He never attempted that shit again.One of the problems with bullies is that administrations almost never want to deal with them out of fear of making their school look bad. On another note - bullies generally want weak targets. If it looks like it will take energy to bully you, most will leave you alone. The ones that keep at it are the ones who probably need some sort of psychological counseling.

I was somewhat expecting to be posting a controversial point of view, but I'm pleased to find that a good many former victims confirm sticking up for yourself by means of an appropriate level of violence is effective.

Humor may protect your sense of selfrespect, but in the experience I had with bullies (and being bullied because I was, on the whole, a fair bit smarter than the most of them) is that they typically fail to grasp the irony just pointed out to them. Even clear-as-day cynicism would go over their heads.

I have lots of reasons to believe (some already proven true) that my children are likely victims in (near) future. To the horror of teachers when we shared our policies, we advocate the sucker punch to the face. Not after months or years, but the first time after the bully in question has been warned to back off. Martial arts are also mandatory in this household (as a defensive measure, mind you).

It may or may not be true that on the larger scale, the most unfortunate party involved is really the personally or emotionally defective bully, but the scars end up on the victim.

I found that during my breakpoint episode, where some people were throwing one of my possessions to one another (Very funny. Yes, well done.) I made sure not only the cost of bullying, but also of going along for the ride was raised by not necessarily chasing my stuff, but just going around the circle and smacking all parties involved.

Another thing: where I went to school and also where my children go, violence of any kind is a real exception. Mild violence is all that is required. In schools where metal detectors are not really a luxury and the walk home potentially perilous, different rules apply. An arms race may be the only option other than taking it on the chin.

Last point to those that point at parents: they are typically a big part of, if not the root cause of their kids being bullies. I would not expect the first bit of comprehension, understanding or compassion, let alone the sort of corrective measures to set their offspring straight. Put another way: mine will NEVER be bullies, because the first time I even smell something is off, there will be some serious parenting coming up.

As the article states, bullies tend to switch off the behavior when adults are around, therefore I think it is very important for all activities at school to be adult-supervised. Even the five-ten minute passing periods in between classes, the teachers should stand in the hall outside their class and watch what is going on, and be there in the stairwells, etc. If a group of kids are at the edge of the yard at recess, an adult should walk over and be in ear-shot.

Parents should be on top of the situation. By "on top" I mean that if a son/daughter complains of being bullied the parents should treat it as immediately as if it were a hurt arm that needs to be x-rayed. Go directly to the school, the teacher, the principal, gym teacher, etc. make sure that the alleged bullying is over-exposed on the first instance. Demand the school contact the parents of the alleged bully and follow up with the school on what came out of that contact. I think the parents reaction needs to be swift and severe to make it very obvious to the kids that addressing bullying is a very, very different situation than a "tattle-tale". Most teachers, and parents, already know to tell kids to not tattle and work out problems themselves, but when the issue is bullying, it is far more serious and needs to be addressed and solved immediately.

I have to disagree. After prison, schools (public schools especially) are the most dog-eat-dog social arenas that exist in our society. The very nature of the bullying relationship is that the bully is picking on someone who is of a lower social standing- and the victim usually has below-average social skills.

You're not going to pick on the most popular kid in class and try to bully him. You're picking on the person who probably doesn't have many friends, and if they do, their friends are probably of similar social standing. Popular kids aren't generally targets of bullying because, by definition, they're social stature has demonstrated that they have good social skills and won't be as likely to fall into the bully's traps.

If the victim appeals to the authorities (parents, teachers, whoever) and brings down a punishment on the bully, it doesn't really help them that much. Bully's are often popular and charismatic. Bully's have friends, who may in fact be bullies themselves. Appealing to the authority figure only reduces the victim's social standing further. Playing off the prison analogy, how do things usually turn out for jailhouse snitches?

The best way to avoid being a victim of bullying, is to not act weird or awkward in the first place. It's not fair, but it's true.

I too, have been bullied in elementary and high school. A huge problem comes from my upbringing where my parents simply told me "don't fight". So basically my tears came from not only being bullied, but also from frustration and feeling trapped. With no way to defend myself. I had no solutions to my very real problems at the time.

My only recourse was to basically do whatever I could to avoid the bullies. If they hung out in a specific area or hallway, I'd deliberately make huge detours in order to reach the classroom. Or I'd do things like go home for lunch(I lived close by). I still remember during a singing assembly that I was bullied by 3 kids at once, and they had a jolly good time doing it(they were standing behind me, punching me and poking fun at me).

If I had been taught from an early age "don't fight, but defend yourself if necessary" a great deal of these issues would have been resolved. I think there needs to be a number of fundamental rules that need to be taught to every kid:

- Stand up for yourself.- In life, everyone takes a beating.- Make friends with the right people.- Adults cannot help you. You're on your own here.

I'm not sure what you mean by "bullies themselves are worse off". There are at least two ways to moralize here (one is more insidious than the other): 1) all bullies are evil; 2) there is something wrong with bullies. #1 is just stupid. #2 is seductive but wrong. Bullies are doing the same thing that everyone does: using a strategy that maximizes their emotional satisfaction at minimal cost. The way in which they do it may harm them and the person being bullied but there is nothing fundamentally (or "essentially") wrong with (most) bullies (except true psychopaths which are extremely rare).

Bravo! Thank you so much for not only calling someone on their moralizing, but also showing us how we can shift our way of looking at a situation in a way where we leave out the moralizing! Making the bullies wrong or bad or damaged serves no one. Thank you!

I particularly liked mastershogo's story for its honesty and insight. I too was a victim of bullying for almost my entire time in public school. I was an excellent target because I couldn't fit in or defend myself. I often thought of myself as a noble victim because I was doing exactly what my parents, teachers, and church leaders wanted me to do. Then last year I read the book "Evil Genes" by Barbara Oakley. It gave me new insight that changed my life.

Oakley shows how we tend to see aggression in others as bad because it is bad for us. Even aggressive people don't like other aggressive people. But consider Hitler. (I know, the discussion just devolved to Hitler. But bare with me, it's in the book.) Hitler was an outstanding soldier who took control over the disorganized German parliament, imposed order in Germany during the Great Depression, built an extensive set of roads and infrastructure, rebuilt the army, restored Germany's national pride, and was Time's Man of the Year ... twice. Why? Because he was an aggressive risk taker. This same trait also caused him to start World War II and genocide. Napoleon had a similar life story, minus the genocide. Stalin and Mao were similarly "evil" but both are seen as great leaders today by the Russians and Chinese respectively. Many US presidents were highly aggressive like George Washington, Andrew Jackson, or Teddy Roosevelt. And the presidents who weren't aggressive, weren't remarkable. Like What's His Name or that Other Guy who were so boring I forgot about them before I left history class.

So what does this have to do with bullying? Well, let's start with the obvious. A bully is aggressive because it is successful for the bully. We see them as bad, because they are bad for the rest of us. Teachers and parents reinforce this idea because fights between children cause a problem for teachers and parents. So they make rules like "No hitting" and "Don't fight back," but only the "good" kids obey, making them easier targets. This was the case for me. Listening to adults made their life easier at my expense. If I had fought back, then it would have caused a problem for the adults, but bullies would've left me alone.

Most kids experiment with aggressive behavior, but people who develop into a highly aggressive adult are often successful in life, because they they take risks and prey on passive people. Barbara Oakley calls them the "successfully sinister". Bullies and victims are just predators and prey. In nature, prey defend themselves with a few basic strategies: avoidance, strength in numbers, counter-attack, and if you do get caught, play dead. The above article indicates that the FearNot! software only promotes avoidance. This is probably because social skills are hard to teach (eliminating strength in numbers) and parents and teachers don't like fights between kids (eliminating counter-attack). But as many of the posters above demonstrate, friends and fighting back work better in the long run than simply running away.

Barbara Oakley describes how aggressive behavior is the result of brain biology. Essentially, if you put a "normal" person (control) in an MRI and show them a disturbing picture, say of roadkill, then the Amygdala (fight or flight) will illuminate, the Prefrontal Cortex (impulse control) will illuminate, and the Amygdala will extinguish. If you run the test on a person diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD, an above average bully), the Amygdala will illuminate, the Prefrontal Cortex won't, and the Amygdala will stay lit for a long time. That is, aggressive people respond to disturbances with intense aggression, which they can't control. If you perform an autopsy, then you will find that people with ASPD have an enlarged Amygdala and reduced Prefrontal Cortex. In other words, bullies are hard wired during childhood development to be aggressive and lack impulse control. Growing up in an aggressive environment will change your brain's development. But genetic tests show that genes code for the development of aggressive behavior. That is, aggression is like height or hair color: we get it from our parents. So reasoning with a bully is an exercise in futility.

If you are the victim of bullying, remember that bullies are different at the brain level, so we should treat bullies differently from everyone else. If you are a bully, then it might be a phase, or it might be a trait. Either way, you will probably see yourself as "normal" and everyone else as having a problem. Finally, parents and teachers should seriously reevaluate their strategies for combating bullying, because the current strategy of choice (avoidance and submission) is only making the problem worse.

I believe all children should be told its alright to defend themselves no matter the situation.I for one was never a victim of bulling since ive always been a big person. Having been a person who stood up for friends who were bullied i know that bullies are in fact pansies who look for those who wont fight back.quick tip for any who are still being bullied a quick shot to the nuts makes all men equal(leave the fair fighting in the ring).

Chris Lee / Chris writes for Ars Technica's science section. A physicist by day and science writer by night, he specializes in quantum physics and optics. He lives and works in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.